Determining the permeability of different types of landscape matrices to animal movement is essential for conserving populations in fragmented landscapes. We evaluated the effects of habitat patch size and matrix type on diversity, isolation, and dispersal of ithomiine butterflies in forest fragments surrounded by coffee agroecosystems in the Colombian Andes. Because ithomiines prefer a shaded ...

Butterflies are believed to use mainly visual cues when searching for food and oviposition sites despite that their olfactory system is morphologically similar to their nocturnal relatives, the moths. The olfactory ability in butterflies has, however, not been thoroughly investigated. Therefore, we performed the first study of odour representation in the primary olfactory centre, the antennal l...

The butterfly Bicyclus anynana exhibits phenotypic plasticity involving the wet-season phenotype, which possesses marginal eyespots on the ventral surface of the wings, and the dry-season form, which lacks these eyespots. We examined the adaptive value of phenotypic plasticity of B. anynana in relation to the defence mechanisms of crypsis and deflection. We assessed the visibility differences b...

The human eye is insensitive to the angular direction of the light e-vector, but several animal species have the ability to discriminate differently polarized lights. How the polarization is detected is often unclear, however. Egg-laying Papilio butterflies have been shown to see false colours when presented with differently polarized lights. Here we asked whether this also holds in foraging bu...

A recent study has found that butterflies maintain behavioural plasticity useful to them in rare environments by reducing associated costs in common environments. Butterflies use innate sensory biases to locate common green hosts, but learn to modify these preferences to find rare, red host-plants.

Mobility is a key factor determining lepidopteran species responses to environmental change. However, direct multispecies comparisons of mobility are rare and empirical comparisons between butterflies and moths have not been previously conducted. Here, we compared mobility between butterflies and diurnal moths and studied species traits affecting butterfly mobility. We experimentally marked and...

visitor management is considered important for the sustainable development of protected areas as the presence of visitors may cause negative impacts on wildlife and vegetation. within this framework, visitor impacts and perceptions are considered critical for decision-making and planning of future management regimes. this paper resumes opinions of visitors of the valley of butterflies in rhodes...

Many butterfly species feature two or four conspicuously coloured eyespots on their wings; the most commonly heard explanation for these markings is that they are used to intimidate predators. However, this explanation has stood, until recently, on the flimsiest of empirical foundations. Now, Adrian Vallin and colleagues have demonstrated empirically the effectiveness of these signals in dissua...